Elphick’s Fishery. Sandwich Lake. June 30th, 2002

Down to Elphicks Fisheries at Horsmonden in Kent for a pleasure session today.
My brother in law Chris had phoned me during the week saying he wanted to take his 7 year old Fraser fishing. “Nothing too hard and plenty of bites please.”
There are five lakes to choose from at Elphick’s and after a chat with the bailiff in the lodge while we purchased our day tickets it was off down to Sandwich Lake (plenty of fish,and not a Carp in sight ).

Chris and Fraser both set up Wagglers on peg 9, while I set up the pole on peg 10. Chris was struggling a bit with trying to fish himself and keep an eye on Fraser as the wind was quite strong, but Fraser was soon into his first ever Chub ……………

 It doesn’t have to be big to be beautiful.

Now Peg 10 has an overflow stack to the left hand side, and a shelf with a depth of about 4 ft  which extends to the right of it for about 20 ft, and it was this shelf that I was going to target with soft pellet and sweetcorn, both of which were glugged in Green Lipped mussel extract, over a bed of hemp and micro pellets.      

PEG 10

It was a bit slow initially but after about 30 minutes, the float gently lifted and sailed away and I soon had a nice little Bream of about 2 lbs was in the net ……………………

A steady flow of Bream followed, interspursed with the occaisional Tench just to liven things up. Chris & Fraser were finding the wind was making bite detection awkward but stuck at it and finally managed to get among the Bream ………………

      think that the smile on Fraser’s face just about says it all.

The icing on the cake for me however,was the capture of 4 Golden Tench at the end of the session. Super fish, like bars of gold …………………

Final total, 26 Bream & 11 Tench including the 4 Goldies. So a good day was had by one & all, plenty of fish,and best of all a 7 year old with a grin like a cheshire cat. 

Falkenville Mushroom Farm. Match Lake.June 23rd, 2002

Hawthorne AC club match.

The venue today was the Mushroom Farm at Falkenville, just outside Hailsham in Sussex for the 4th Hawthorne club match of the season.

The Racetrack.(looking from the bottom towards the top end)

The match was to take place on the fishery match lake called The Racetrack, and the target species on this lake is Carp, but there is also a prolific head of Roach and skimmers if the Carp don’t show, an interesting addition however are a number of Wels Catfish up to about 15lbs .

After a superb cooked breakfast in the barn it was time for the draw. The favoured swims with the wind as it was, were at the top end of the lake. So as you can guess out comes 23, at the opposite end.

On previous matches at this venue I’ve dabbled with paste for bait, with varying degrees of success. Today I had decided that come what may I would stick with a pellet and paste attack .
With the wind gusting and making presentation awkward at 13mtrs, I just set up the one rig to fish pellet over paste at 7mtrs. This consisted of a Drennan Carp2 float on a length of Trilene XT and a Drennan Carbon Carp (size 10). No weight on the rig, just the weight of the paste to cock the float.

Sport was never fast and furious, but the bites when they came were either a definite lift or sailaways and I finished the match by putting 41lbs 14ozs (all Carp) on the scales, which was top weight on my bank, but only good enough for 3rd overall.

This is the best result I’ve had fishing paste,and I shall be trying it a lot more in the coming season and putting some of Malc’s recipes to the test.

Rayne Lodge Fishery. Bottom Lake. June 2nd, 2002

Hawthorne AC club match.

Having fished this venue twice before in atrocious conditions, I was hoping for third time lucky. The weather was certainly better in fact it was scorching.
There are 28 pegs on the lake, and I drew peg 16 and on reaching it was delighted to see that I could reach the island at 13mtrs and I also had plenty of cover provided by bushes and weed beds in both margins.
The going method in recent weeks had been expander pellet over pellet and this was to be the main line of attack, with corn and maggot as a back up.
Trouble was that the hot weather had woken up the Carp to spawn, and that appeared to be the only thing on their minds at my end of the lake. The whole day was spent watching fish after fish thrashing the water to foam as they charged through the weed beds in the margins.
All I could manage to whittle out were a few small Tench and Crucians for a rather dissapointing 11lbs 4ozs, only good enough for 10th on the day.